Catty
by Alleyprowler
Summary: A glimpse into Quatre's early relationship with Iria.


Title: Catty

Warnings: None

Summary: A sappy, fluffy, WAFF-y little insight into Quatre's relationship with Iria.

"Catty, don't cry."

The five-year-old boy in Iria Winner's arms wasn't crying, precisely, but his huge blue eyes were going watery at the lower lids and he was taking deep, gulping breaths of air as if he was trying to calm himself down. "Why do you have to go so far away?" he asked her.

"I have to go to school, Catty. I'm going away to University and I'm going to be a doctor, just like I've always wanted to be. Honey, we talked about this!"

"I know, but that was before." Quatre stroked a long lock of his sister's burnished-golden hair, which fell to her waist in shimmering natural ripples. He thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world, his sister's hair, and it dawned on him that he wouldn't be helping her brush it tomorrow morning. It was one of many small realizations that had been hitting him all day and breaking his resolve not to cry. Iria was really going to be leaving him! He buried his face in her warm, fragrant hair and closed his eyes tightly.

"Honey, I'll call you every night and I'll come home on breaks," she said, running a hand up and down his spine. "I'm not leaving you forever! And when I come home for good, I'll be a real doctor. I'll be _your_ doctor, if you like."

"But you already are!" he cried against her shoulder. In his opinion, Iria was already the best doctor there was. She knew how to remove a loose tooth, how to bandage scraped knees and elbows, how to fix a bee sting, how to make a cold feel better, and how to mend a broken heart. She was certainly much better than that tall, smelly man who always wanted to poke needles into him and stick that cold, nasty…_thing_ in his ears.

She nuzzled his almost-white hair and smiled. "Oh, baby, you say the sweetest things. I'm flattered, I really am, but it's _illegal_ to practice medicine without a license."

He raised his head off her shoulder and stared at her with huge, solemn eyes. "I won't tell anyone you did," he said with the deep sincerity that only five-year-olds can manage.

She had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from bursting into laughter. "Quatre, what do you mean, you won't tell?"

"That you took care of me without a license," he whispered.

No amount of cheek-biting could help her contain her composure. Her laughter startled Blanca, the family cat, from her slumber on the piano bench, and when the laughter threatened to go on for a good long time, the affronted feline stalked off to another, quieter room.

The boy on her lap stayed, although he looked confused and a little annoyed by her outburst. When she was more or less under control, she hugged her little brother and kissed him on the forehead. "Honey, I think I can safely dispense Band-Aids and baby aspirin without the InterColony Medical Association coming down on my head. It's the _big_ things that you need a license for."

"Like broken arms?" Quatre asked, remembering his fall from the apple tree in the back yard six months ago and how much it had hurt. He'd had to go to the hospital for that, but since Iria and Father had been by his side every minute, he hadn't been scared. Well, not very much.

"Yeah, like broken arms," she said with a grin. "And with your habit of climbing every vertical surface you can find, you're going to _need_ a licensed doctor around."

His little face scrunched up into something resembling an offended scowl. "I'm a _good_ climber. I hardly ever fall."

"It's the 'hardly' part that worries me, Catty." She hugged him again, relishing the feeling of his tiny, warm body in her arms. "Try not to give Father any more scares like that while I'm gone, though. You're a smart kid, but you're a little too young to head WEI if he falls over dead of a stroke because he catches you climbing the bookshelves again."

Quatre had begun to smile when she hugged him, but it faded when she said that last part. Oh, he knew Iria was joking about Father dying. Father was too big and strong to die. It was just that the thought of having to go to all those meetings that Father was always going to and taking all those calls from angry, shouting men, and reading all those papers with very small print and no pictures…Quatre didn't want that. He liked to run, and climb things, and listen to music, and take apart household gadgets to see how they worked (although he wasn't so good at putting them back together again), and basically do anything but sit around in meetings with boring, stuffy old men.

But just because he was only five didn't mean that Quatre didn't know what 'responsibility' meant. "I'll be good, Iria."

"I know you will, my dearest little Quatre," she said. She hugged him.

And then she walked away.

Thirteen years later, a young man stood up slowly from where he had been kneeling on the ground. He bushed at his grass-stained knees, then bent down to straighten a disarranged daffodil in the flower arrangement he had brought with him. He lifted his fingertips to his lips and seemed to kiss them; then he touched his hand to the memorial stone in front of him. His lips moved silently, forming the words, "I love you."

And then he walked away.

END


End file.
